Friends, family remember slain Warwick High School students

NEWPORT NEWS — Friends, family, teachers and classmates are remembering the two Warwick High School students slain at an elementary school parking lot 12 days ago.

John A. "Lito" Nieves Jr., 17, and Bryant M. Wilder Jr., 16, were gunned down just before 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 14. The slayings occurred in the parking lot of Saunders Elementary School, just off of Harpersville Road.

Later that day, Newport News police arrested another Warwick student, David James Hosley Jr., 17, charging him with two counts of second-degree murder. He was also charged with aggravated malicious wounding in the shooting of another teen in the same incident, and related charges.

Police have not revealed a motive for the triple shooting.

John, who would have been a Warwick senior this year, and Bryant, who would have been a junior, were good friends.

They often played video games together — such as their favored Grand Theft Auto. They did that at each other's homes, and by using "Xbox Live," which allows players to talk through headsets while competing at different locations.

John's uncle, Raymond Nieves, 35, from Clinton, Mass., said "Lito" loved talking with people from around the world as he played on Xbox. Whether it be older gamers, "little kids," or people his own age, Nieves said, John "always had them laughing."

"We always had a blast," said Nieves, who often played video games with his nephew as they chatted through headsets. "He was all happiness. Lito was always the one if there was any problem, he would make that person smile, had that person laughing no matter what. … He would turn everyone's frown upside down."

When Nieves — known as "Uncle Nemo" to his nephew — was having a bad day, John would tell him "not to worry about that," and soon they'd be playing a few rounds of Grand Theft Auto. "He kept you going when you didn't feel like going," Nieves said at John's funeral, where the teen had his Xbox remote control and headset in his casket.

When John moved to Newport News from Massachusetts a couple years ago, he "created his own style" at Warwick, his uncle said. He'd sport bright Hawaiian clothes — telling classmates he was half Hawaiian.

"He was 100 percent Puerto Rican," Nieves said. John once told his uncle not to blow his cover during a visit, "and I said I wouldn't because I love what you got going. … That was his sense of humor, but people believed it because he was a leader."

"He had a lot of friends," said Melissa MacIntyre, an earth science teacher at Warwick. "He always had his pack of friends he'd be with." During small group sessions, she said, John and his friends would "do the work," but have a good time while doing it.

A friend who spoke at John's funeral, Jacob Lonergan, 16, said he will miss his humor and bluntness. "If you stank, he let you know you stank," Jacob said, drawing laughter from the crowd. "He would tell you what he thought."

Jacob said he, John and Bryant were planning to move to "Cali" together to buy a large house to start their music career. "We were all going to move in together," Jacob said. "I have to do that alone now. But it's still going to happen."

Bryant, too, was very well-liked at Warwick, his friends said.

"He was a good kid," said Corey Robertson, 19, a friend of Bryant's. "He didn't bother anybody. Always just smiling, happy. ... If (you were joking around), he would always have a comeback for you. He was full of energy."

No one would have expected Bryant to be killed in such a fashion, because he never had trouble with the law and didn't associate with people who did, Robertson said. "He didn't surround himself with all that," he said. "It wasn't his time."

Jasmine Rosario, 21, John's older sister and also a good friend of Bryant's, sounded a similar note. "For this to happen, they were never like that," she said.

Bryant "was my brother's first friend when he moved down here" from Massachusetts a couple years ago, Rosario said. "They were always together," she said — in the hallways at Warwick, and playing Xbox at John's mother's house in Newport News.

In fact, Rosario said, Bryant was so close to the family that he would call her "Sis." "You could be upset, and he'd come up to you and say, 'Don't be mad at me, Sis. Don't be mad at me."

"Bryant touched many lives, no matter who he met or where he went," said his obituary in the Daily Press. "He was not a stranger to anyone. He made a host of friends wherever he was. He had eyes and a smile that would make you melt. He was popular among his friends and classmates. He was known for being funny and always making people laugh."

The obituary said Bryant liked skateboarding, fishing, and music — and hoped to one day have a career in music.

For his part, John planned to follow two of his uncles into the military. He was hoping to be an aircraft mechanic in the Air Force, using skills he developed while working on cars with his father back in Massachusetts.

At the funeral at Parklawn-Wood Funeral Home in Hampton, "Uncle Nemo" read a two-page, hand-written poem about John, which he wrote one night after the killing when he couldn't sleep.

The poem said, in part: "I'll never trade it, but I'm feeling faded/I'm dedicated to make your legacy known, but I hate it/that I no longer can hear you say that we are related/But deep inside I know you finally made it/To the promised land."

At the end of Bryant's funeral at First Baptist Church in Newport News, just after mourners streamed up to his parents to pay their respects, his mother, Wanda Wilder, leaned over her son's casket as music played in the background.